'Supernatural' recap: Season 9, episode 3: 'I’m No Angel'

This is not going to be the episode that restores your love of “Supernatural” heavenly choirs.

Credit: Diyah Pera/The CW

Priests walk through a graveyard. They meet a squadron of angels in suits. Looking for Castiel. This is not going to be the episode that restores your love of “Supernatural” heavenly choirs.

Cas is hiding out in a grungy shelter, swallowing toothpaste and calling himself Clarence. While picking up trash in the park, he follows a trail of blood to the graveyard, where his baby blues widen in horror to see two dead priests with their eyes blown out. You know you’re in a screwy world when the angels are killing priests. Watch your back, Cas.

Back at the Men of Letters bunker, Sam’s feeling great – he gets up early, goes for a run, brings Dean breakfast. Dean tries to rein him in a little. Ezekiel tells him about a faction of angels who are organizing and who will stop at nothing to put Cas’s pretty head on a spike. Sam’s Sam again and Dean’s having trouble explaining away the new info (or keeping Sam/Zeke straight).

A televangelist named Rev. Buddy Boyle tells people to let the angels in and receive their grace – common enough televangelism, but so very sinister given the circumstances. He’s in cahoots with an angel named Bartholomew, a sociopath in a suit, who’s taking advantage of the faithful to find vessels for angels – except not just anyone can be a vessel. A girl at the studio accepts, then gets blown up because she can’t contain the angel.

Sam and Dean pick up on her death and on the deaths of the two priests. Both cases seem like angel kills, except the angels are torturing people now.

Cas is hanging out in a hobo camp. He’s having trouble acclimating to being mortal, even trying to fall asleep is hard. He wakes and gets attacked by a pharmacist-turned-killer-angel. The angel he ganks is surprised Cas is completely human.

Sam and Dean come seeking Cas, only to find they’re one step behind him. They’re seeking “Clarence,” which is what Meg used to call him. Aww. They find out about the death of the pharmacist-angel.

Cas goes in to a tattoo parlor to get angel-proofed. He’s overwhelmed by his mortality. He goes into a church and listens to a woman praying for the angels to heal her husband. She tells him people need something stronger than themselves. He posits the truth to her, asks what she would do. She tells him he’s missing the point, because she has faith, and his lack of it doesn’t cancel what she believes, and that someone is listening. Cas is taken aback.

Bart finds out that Cas killed his operative. It seems everyone’s favorite divine accountant is a bit dangerous. And, thanks to the wards, he’s vanished. Bart talks to a rogue reaper. He tells him if he finds the Winchesters, he’ll find Cas.

Sam and Dean go through pharmacy angel’s stuff. From a podcast on the dearly departed’s phone, they find out ol’ Buddy’s been telling people to be willing to let the angels possess them. They investigate Boyle and find out his reach is the entire planet. Oh, the humanity! They’re followed by Rogue Reaper.

Sam and Dean talk to the hobo camp. “Look, we’re not cops,” insists Dean. “Do we look like cops?” I guess nine seasons of impersonating G-men have caught up with you, boys. They find out Cas ran out of town, probably to Detroit. Detroit, Cas?

While digging through the garbage, Cas is approached by a young woman. She shares her PB and J with him to stop him from eating garbage pickles. Cas feels grateful, and again wonders at humanity’s capacity for good. When she gets out of work, she sees Cas out in the rain, and brings him home. Her name’s April Kelly. His name’s Castiel. Cas tells her he failed because he was vain, that he thought he was more important than he was. She and Cas kiss, camera pans out. Go Cas! Embrace your humanity! And April!

Sam and Dean ambush the Rogue Reaper, interrogate him, find out Naomi’s dead, and her protégé Bart is in charge, and then kill Rogue Reaper.

Cas and April have a post-sex chat, and she assures him he did everything fine. She tries to get him to open up about his blame and guilt. “I’m no angel,” he says. Aww.

In the morning though, something’s gone horribly wrong. She’s not the real April. She’s a reaper, or an angel (are they interchangeable now?), and she was careful before because she heard he was dangerous and she wanted information. He’s not exactly thrilled, and she tortures him. He doesn’t know anything about Metatron’s spell that cast the angels from heaven, and that he didn’t understand what was going on. He warns her not to kill him because if his grace was the final ingredient in the spell, it might be needed to undo it.

Zeke finds out where Cas is and Sam and Dean burst in to April’s apartment just as April stabs Cas. Dean returns the favor, but Cas is dead. Dean cries. Castiel! Nooo! Not to worry, however – Zeke heals him. And then Sam faints. Cas and Sam are both very confused. Dean lies out of his teeth. It’s a pretty bad lie. Sam asks him how he found April’s place. He lies. Badly.

They congregate at the bunker. Cas acknowledges there’s more to humanity than survival – there’s a purpose. He reveals that he and April … you know. Dean can’t resist toying with him.

Zeke issues an ultimatum: Either Cas goes or he does (and Sam dies). Dean, because he’s doing exactly all the wrong things lately, tells Cas he can’t stay. Where will the lies and betrayals end, Dean?